When an employer decides to hire a new employee, a hiring manager composes a job description that states the requirements for the new employee. The requirements typically include characteristics and qualifications for the new employee. The hiring manager or the employer initiates the process of hiring the new employee, the job opening fulfillment process, by advertising the job description to the public or a focused group of recruitment vendors. In response to the employer posting the job description, the hiring manager receives resumes either directly from applicants or from a recruitment vendor who represents applicants.
A resume, or curriculum vitae, summarizes a candidate's career and qualifications. The resume is a mechanism to convey personal and business-related characteristics that the candidate believes to be relevant to a prospective employer. The resume typically includes the candidate's career objective, personal interests, professional affiliations, educational background, employment history, and a description of work experience.
The candidate review portion of the job opening fulfillment process historically is a manual process for the hiring manager. The hiring manager, or a representative of the hiring manager, begins candidate review by reviewing each paper or electronic resume received in response to posting the job description. Throughout candidate review, the hiring manager, or a representative of the hiring manager, keeps the requirements of the position in mind. For each resume, the hiring manager, or a representative of the hiring manager, decides whether the resume describes qualifications that can satisfy the job requirements. If a resume may satisfy the job requirements, the hiring manager, or a representative of the hiring manager, contacts the candidate, or a recruitment vendor representing the candidate, to invite the candidate for an interview. If the candidate accepts the invitation, the interview and a number of additional steps will help the hiring manager to decide whether to hire the candidate. One disadvantage of this process is the time required by the hiring manager, or a representative of the hiring manager, to review resumes that might not possibly qualify for the position. The hiring manager, or a representative of the hiring manager, reviews a number of resumes for the purpose of narrowing them down to a few resumes that describe candidates who might qualify for the position and warrant an interview or hire. Furthermore, the accuracy of the manual process to qualify candidates for the subsequent steps in the interviewing and hiring process depends on the accuracy of the resume review conducted by the hiring manager, or a representative of the hiring manager. This increases the likelihood that the hiring manager, or a representative of the hiring manager, will miss the resume of a qualified potential candidate or promote the resume of an unqualified potential candidate for consideration. Thus, the manual nature of candidate review and the job opening fulfillment process does not lend itself to a thorough, careful, and timely review of submitted resumes.
Prior electronic systems improved upon the manual process by creating tools to scan the text of the resume for key words specified in the job requirements of the job description. Other prior electronic systems have required the candidate, or a recruitment vendor representing the candidate, to complete and submit an electronic profile to specify the candidate's skills and qualifications. Alternatively, the other prior art electronic systems have required the candidate, or a recruitment vendor representing the candidate, to specify whether the candidate has the required experience and the required duration for each of the job requirements of the job description. Still other prior electronic systems perform a combination of the previously mentioned scenarios. The impetus for developing the prior electronic systems was to give the hiring manager, or a representative of the hiring manager, some level of assistance when qualifying a resume submitted for review. These prior systems typically scanned the resume using a textual word search of the resume content. Although at times, the textual word search accounted for alternative terminology, spelling, format, or case differences between the job requirements and the stated text in the resume, the textual word search never took into account the duration of experience associated with a word or phrase in the resume. The duration of experience was only searchable after the candidate, or a recruitment vendor representing the candidate, has entered it in the profile. The manual review of resumes for a specific duration of experience in a specific field or skill is a timely and error prone process. The disadvantages of the prior art include missing a qualified candidate, considering an unqualified candidate for an interview, and erroneously accusing a recruitment vendor of submitting unacceptable candidates to the hiring manager, or a representative of the hiring manager. The metrics used to evaluate the quality of the resume submissions by a vendor was constantly erroneous and skewed by the inaccurate evaluation of submitted resumes. Thus, the prior art systems not only fail to identify qualified candidates, but also recommend the review of unqualified candidates thereby wasting the valuable time of all the parties involved in the hiring process.
Other prior electronic systems attempted to solve the vulnerability of the manual process of reviewing resumes by relying on the candidate, or a recruitment vendor representing the candidate, to input the candidate's duration of experience in a skill or experience-related phrase that the job description requires. A skill or experience-related phrase is a sequence of one or more consecutive words. A word is a sequence of one or more consecutive printable characters, numbers, or symbols. These prior systems rely on the candidate, or a recruitment vendor representing the candidate, to enter correctly and accurately the duration of experience possessed by the candidate for each skill or experience-related phrase required by the job description. There are three principal disadvantages to these prior systems.
First, prior electronic systems provide a very time consuming set-up for the candidate, a recruitment vendor representing the candidate, a hiring manager, and a representative of the hiring manager. For each required skill or experience-related phrase in each job description, the candidate must enter or have entered the required skill or experience-related phrase and the associated duration of experience. This becomes a particularly daunting task when one considers that an applicant may want to apply for a number of job descriptions, each having an individual list of required qualifications.
Second, prior electronic systems relied on text word searches or knowledge-based searches combined with text word searches, both of which did not accommodate a job requiring a duration of experience for each of the required skills. These systems cannot consider a skill or experience-related phrase and its possible duration of experience electronically as soon as the resume arrives into the system. To match a resume to the job requirements, the prior art calculated the duration of experience for a skill or experience-related phrase manually, never electronically. The hiring manager, or a representative of the hiring manager, manually tallied the duration of experience for each required skill or experience-related phrase, or its alternatives to determine whether the resume meets the required duration of experience in each required skill or experience-related phrase, or its alternative.
Third, the manual process introduces the potential for human error. Adherence of the submitted resumes to the required duration of experience for the required skill or experience-related phrase may assess the candidate, or a recruitment vendor representing the candidate, either wrongfully or unjustifiably. The process may turn down candidates when they shouldn't be and vice versa. The recruitment vendor may be misjudged on the quality of the resumes that they submit and whether they adhere to the requirements of job descriptions.
Thus, there is a need for a recruitment vendor management system that includes matching tools that accurately assess whether a submitted resume meets a job description. The system will improve the evaluation process of applying candidates. Additionally, the system will improve the evaluation process of the recruitment vendor who submits candidates to the hiring manager, or a representative of the hiring manager. The system will save time and money during the review of resumes by the hiring manager, or a representative of the hiring manager. The system will also improve the time required to respond to applying candidates, allowing the candidates to know sooner whether they are being considered for a job description. The system determines whether a resume includes the qualifications or job requirements sought, and also identifies and rejects resumes that cannot possibly include the qualifications or job requirements sought. Each job requirement for a job description comprises a required skill or experience-related phrase, and a minimum required duration of experience in the skill or experience-related phrase. The system accommodates resumes that contain a narrative of job experiences within a duration or date range. The contents of the resume should suffice when determining whether the candidate meets the required minimum duration in a specific skill or experience-related phrase without relying on the candidate to enter the data into a profile. The present invention addresses these needs.